Champions for School Health
Program Overview
The Champions for School Health (CSH) project, to increase confidence in and access to pediatric COVID-19 vaccinations, was created in partnership with the Institute for Educational Leadership (IEL) and with the generous financial support of Kaiser Permanente in California, Colorado, Georgia, Hawaii, Maryland, Oregon, Virginia, Washington and the District of Columbia. The project addressed both the immediate and long-term goals and outcomes of:
- increasing pediatric COVID-19 vaccination rates among children aged 5-11,
- increasing confidence in pediatric COVID-19 vaccines, and
- creating sustainable school and community partnerships.
The project included grant funding through two vehicles: $1 million in implementation grants administered through NASN, and $1 million in challenge grant funding administered through IEL. NASN awarded 54 implementation grants to 30 School Nurse (SN) leaders and 24 small community-based organizations (CBOs) to increase vaccine access and vaccine confidence among underserved populations in KP’s footprint. NASN and IEL co-funded one school nurse-community school (CS) collaboration project to explore sustainable models for community/school health services partnerships to address health equity. NASN developed a vaccine confidence toolkit centered on a trusted advisor strategy built with permission on the foundation of Framework Institute’s AAP vaccine confidence research (see link to toolkit on the right).
Key Findings/Highlights
- Through two grant cycles, the 54 projects administered a total of 17,630 COVID-19 vaccines to individuals ages 5 and older of which 4,045 vaccines were administered to children ages 5-11 yrs. 34,025 routine immunizations were also administered over these two funding cycles of which 8,233 school required vaccinations went to children ages 5-11 yrs.
- All grantees chose to conduct vaccine confidence and education activities that included in person education events/health fairs, mass mailings and telephone calls or education via social media (FB live events) to build confidence in the COVID-19 vaccine. Over 851,000 people were reached by these vaccine education events in all 9 KP markets. A highlight as reported by every grantee is that 1:1 conversations by their trusted messengers convinced families to vaccinate their children and/or themselves.
- A notable takeaway are the new partnerships created and the continuation of existing partnerships. Grantees reported their intention to continue working with new partners for their ongoing work and future projects. Almost all the CBO grantees developed partnerships with SNs in their local service areas and reported the important role SNs played in the success of their CSH projects.
- Through this project, grantees developed a series of resources to address common barriers to offering school located vaccine clinics and community access to COVID-19 vaccines and routine immunizations (see links to public online library on the right of page).
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